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Westchase

Reader and aerial logo photographer Henry Phillips sends these recent shots of work crews playing pin-the-signage-on-the-restaurant at the next local locale of Austin import Torchy’s Tacos (which will bring the Houston-area count up to 8, out of the chain’s 11 planned plantingsso far). The latest tacover is happening in the Westchase Mall corner slot at the southeast corner of Westheimer Rd. and Wilcrest Dr. most recently occupied by another defunct branch of Black-Eyed Pea; the developing restaurant shares a strip center sidewalk with the Whole Foods that was transplanted across Wilcrest into the dead former Randalls last year.

A reader sends a shot of the roof of the last of the 4 former BMC Software campus parking garages to get put on the parking-space straight-and-narrow. Last Friday the angled stripes got powerwashed off of the top floor of the turn-of-the-millenium structure, which sits along CityWest Blvd. north of the new Phillips 66 campus just outside Beltway 8. All of the remaining garages on the site appear to have been restriped one at a time over the past decade or so with 90-degree parking spots (as can be seen on the roof of another of the garages in the upper right, further north along CityWest). The office complex goes by CityWestPlacethese days; the complex is one of the properties held by new Houston-only REIT (New) Parkway, which was formed earlier this month when old Parkway and Cousins Properties merged then dumped all of their Houston holdings into a new, separate REIT.

Perpendicular spaces will better fit in with the campus’s general rectilinear motifs — for example, with this series of narrow rectangular water features on the other side of that northern parking garage:

Belt West Shopping Center, which previously housed both Grace Presbyterian’s coffee shop The Well and Shelby’s Liquor, has been returning to dust of late, per a reader’s leafy photo of the site from this morning. The western end of the 1975 strip (largely hidden from the northwest corner of Westheimer and Seagler roads by 2 other retail strips and a Shell Station) has also been home to some of the operations of Project C.U.R.E. — a nonprofit named by the late July demolition permit as an occupant, which collects and donates medical supplies to the developing world.

Both the church’s Facebook page and a church representative reached by phone this afternoon indicate that the church-owned property will remain a part of the Grace Presbyterian fold. The shots below from Seagler show the strip midway through its retail-to-ruins transition last week:

The credit card machines at the new Seiwa Market at 1801 S. Dairy Ashford Rd. weren’t up and running yet as of Friday, but the Japanese grocery store did open its doors this weekend to cash-only customers as part of a test run soft opening. The market and its internal food court options will eventually be flanked by other Japanese restaurants, from the looks of things: Ramen House Ichi is currently under construction next door, and the Seiwa store manager told the HBJ last month that a high-end Japanese seafood house is planned for the same shopping center somewhere on the other side.

A reader snagged a few shots of the scene inside Seiwa’s space in Suite 116 of the late 1970s Ashford Village Center shopping strip, across from the Dairy Ashford Roller Rink:

The 24.5-acre plot along the W. Sam Houston Pwky. formerly snagged by Schlumberger’s Cameron International looks to be back on the market, a reader notes. Dow Chemical’s quadruple-decade-plus facility got cleared off the land at the end of 2009 following the purchase of the property by an entity connected to Apache Corporation; the spot was sold to Cameron in 2013, when rumor had it that the company would build a skyscraper’s worth of office space on the site. The property was listed afresh by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank around the end of April.

Here’s an aerial view of the Royal Oaks Village II shopping center, where the Houston area’s fifth Trader Joe’s is already under construction behind the Harvest Organic Grille. (That’s the unidentified pad-site restaurant at the top right of the shopping center, which is outlined in red.) There the new grocery store take its place among a spread of nearby food-shopping options along the south side of Westheimer, which include the Walmart Supercenter at W. Houston Center Blvd., the Chick-Fil-A and H-E-B at Kirkwood, and the Whole Foods Market at Wilcrest.

Crews have broken open the front of the former Randalls grocery store in the Westchase Shopping Center at the corner of Wilcrest and Westheimer, and are busy inserting a new, smaller Whole Foods Market inside. The photo above shows the view from the One Westchase Center office building, immediately to the east. This isn’t Whole Foods’ first Randalls redo; a new Whole Foods at 1407 S. Voss, on the former site of another Randalls, is scheduled to open next Wednesday.

“Does a building have diplomatic immunity to local ordinances if [its site] is deemed international soil?” asks Architect’s Newspaper reporter Jay Thomas, reporting on the variance request made on behalf of a new General Consulate of Saudi Arabia complex in Westchase — which Houston’s planning commission denied in December. The applicants for the variance appear to say yes, it does: “The Consulate should be considered foreign soil and should be allowed to develop the property as they have planned as long as it doesn’t harm the public in any way,” reads the application.

But the design team went ahead and applied for the variance anyway. Why?

A new 45,000-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market will move into a portion of the soon-to-be-closing recently closed Randalls grocery store in the Westchase Shopping Center, landlord Weingarten Realty announced today. The 25,663-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market that’s been operating in the same REIT’s Market at Westchase since 1991 — just across Wilcrest at 11145 Westheimer — will shutter when the new Whole Foods opens — in 2016.

This latest rendering of the global headquarters that Phillips 66 plans to build in Westchase during the next few years doesn’t seem all that different from an earlier one published on Swamplot in June — except it comes from CEO Greg Garland and was shared with Houston-area employees this morning in an email. Additionally, Garland’s message says that construction could begin by the end of the year on the 14.2-acre campus just north of Westheimer along the Beltway 8 feeder. After the jump you can see a pair of floor plans included with the rendering that show some of the planned amenities, like a dining room, coffee shop, fitness center, and Grab-and-Go:

This rendering appears to show the new Phillips 66 global headquarters planned to go up in Westchase. Back in September, the ConocoPhillips offshoot announced it would be building something on the Beltway 8 feeder next to a pair of hotels just north of Westheimer. The announcement went on to say that the 14.2-acre site bound by City West Blvd., Private Dr., and Cityplace Dr. will have a training and development center, conference space, credit union, gym, cafeteria, coffee shop, and convenience store.

Dunkin’ Donuts announced yesterday where it’ll be sprinkling 4 new stores across Houston. This rendering shows the standalone planned for 18315 W. Lake Houston Pkwy. in Humble. There’ll also be a location inside IAH’s Terminal E, one at 4130 Fairmont Pkwy. in Pasadena, and another, as suspected, at the renovated former Arby’s at 2330 S. Shepherd and Fairview. Last month, the chain opened the first of a reported 24 stores planned for the Houston area at 10705 Westheimer in Westchase.

If you can’t wait until June or July for Dunkin’ Donuts to open inside the Loop at the former Arby’s at South Shepherd and Fairview, you might plan to come here, the former SmashBurger at 10705 Westheimer, where a company rep says that the donut makers will open in May the first of 16 planned Houston stores. Sharing the Westchase strip center with a Cricket store and Brookstreet Bar-B-Que, the coffee-colored endcap has undergone at least one other renovation: A drive-thru lane now cuts through what had been SmashBurger’s treeside patio.

There’s a changing of the guard at the strip-center endcap at 10705 Westheimer in Westchase. Workers have been taking down the signs; the Smashburger in that location closed for good on Monday. A reader claims that the burger joint, on a small strip directly adjacent to the McDonald’s at the corner of Wallingford Rd., was the chain’s worst-performing store. And: that the location has already been reserved for Dunkin’ Donuts. A franchise group plans to open 16 new Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Houston over the next 6 years.